Dr. Rene Anand (Founder, CEO, Board of Directors)
Dr. Anand earned his BS (Chemistry) from Loyola College, India, M.S. (Chemistry/Chemical Physics) from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai, India, and his Ph.D. at The Ohio State University. His doctoral dissertation mentor was Dr. Elio Vanin, who trained with Dr. Oliver Smithies (U. Wisconsin), Nobel Prize winner, 2007. He did his postdoctoral training at the Salk Institute, San Diego and University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia with Dr. Jon Lindstrom, Trustee Professor, and discoverer of cause of Myasthenia Gravis.
He held faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Louisiana State University Neuroscience Center and Ohio State University. He has served on the grant review panel for Brain Canada, Alzheimer’s Association, NIH, Autism Speaks, California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP), Hong Kong Research Grants Council, Israel Science Foundation, and American Association for Advancement of Science.
He has served on the External Scientific Advisory Board for the NERT program, Louisiana Tech, and on the NINDS Human DNA Repository, and Autism Speaks. Dr. Anand has earned the Lieber Independent Investigator Award from NARSAD as well as the Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration (EUREKA) award from the National Institutes of Health for his research. His research has been funded by NIH, Autism Speaks, the Bill and Marci Ingram Family Fund, and the Brain and Behavior Foundation (NARSAD) and National Science Foundation.
Ms. Susan McKay (CTO, Technology Co-Inventor, Board of Directors)
Susan McKay, MS, worked previously at the Ohio State University’s department of Pharmacology in the College of Medicine with 25 years of experience in clinical research in pharmacology, genetics and molecular biology. She holds BS from the University of Texas and an MS from the Medical College of Georgia and over 20 publications.
Dr. Manoj Malhotra (Senior Business Advisor; Board of Directors)
Dr. Malhotra has extensive business experience and his acumen critically guides Neurxstem Inc.’s business, financial and marketing decisions. He is a co-founder and serves on board of advisors for the management consulting firm Bigsky Associates since its inception in 2006. Details of the advisory board and founders can be seen at this site. A brief experience synopsis is included here.
Manoj K. Malhotra is the Jeff B. Bates Professor, and the Chair of the Management Science Department, since 2000 at the Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina (USC), Columbia. He is also the founding Director of the Center for Global Supply Chain and Process Management (GSCPM). This Center has garnered over $3.5 Million in industry support since its inception in 2005 from firms such as Carolina Healthcare Systems, Coca Cola Bottling, Colonial, Ingersoll Rand, Johnson & Johnson, Michelin, Pfizer, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Siemens, and Textron among others. The academic excellence and research reputation of the Management Science department in the discipline has climbed steadily over the past 16 years, while its undergraduate program in Global Supply Chain and Operations Management (GSCOM) has recently been ranked 7th nationally, and the graduate program 15th nationally, by the Gartner Group. These programs produce graduates who receive placements at highly competitive salaries in well-regarded multinational firms and consulting organizations.
Dr. Malhotra earned an engineering undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, India, in 1983, and a PhD in operations management from The Ohio State University in 1990. He is a Fellow of the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI) and the American Production and Inventory Management Society (APICS). Dr. Malhotra has conducted seminars, and consulted with and advised firms such as Avaya, Continental, Cummins Turbo Technologies, Delta Airlines, John Deere, Metso Paper, Nephron Pharmaceuticals, Palmetto Health, Sonoco, Prysmian, Verizon, Walmart, and Westinghouse-Toshiba.
Apart from teaching operations management, supply chain management, and global business issues at the Darla Moore School of Business, Dr. Malhotra has also taught at the Terry School of Business, University of Georgia; Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien in Austria; and the Graduate School of Management at Macquarie University, Australia. He is the co-author of a leading textbook in the field, which has been translated into several languages and is used around the globe. Dr. Malhotra’s research has thematically focused on the deployment of flexible resources in manufacturing and service firms, operations and supply chain strategy, and on the interface between operations management and other functional areas of business such as information systems and marketing. His work on these and related issues has been published in the leading refereed journals of the field such as Decision Sciences, European Journal of Operational Research, Interfaces, Journal of Operations Management, and Production and Operations Dr. Malhotra has been recognized for his pedagogical and scholarly contributions through several teaching and discipline-wide research awards. He is the recipient of the Michael J. Mungo Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award in 2006, the Carolina Trustee Professor Award in 2014, and the Breakthrough Leadership in Research Award in 2014 from the University of South Carolina. He is active in professional organizations such as Decision Sciences Institute (DSI) and Production and Operations Management Society (POMS), and has served as the program chair for international conferences at both DSI and POMS. He is currently the President-Elect of POMS. He also serves on the editorial boards of top-tier journals in the field, and is an active contributor to faculty governance activities at the University of South Carolina.
Dr. Johnny Rungtusanatham (Senior Business Advisor)
Dr. Rungtusanatham teaches courses related to operations excellence and has also been involved in program, university center, and non-profit business development in related fields. In 2003, he co-founded the online MBA degree offering at the WP Carey School of Business at Arizona State University with an initial budget of approximately $1.8 million, successfully leading efforts to develop courseware, articulate strategic positioning of the offering, market against other first movers, and grow a global enrollment base. He is currently advising and consulting with a 501c(3) non-profit (i) to stabilize its product and service offerings to members in order to revitalize its membership base and (ii) to establish new policies and technology-enabled procedures for efficient operations.
Dr. Vinay Puduvalli, MD, Professor and Chair, Department of Neuro-Oncology, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, USA (Scientific Advisory Board)
Dr. Peter Cruse, MD, Partner, Gulf Associates, Rhodes Scholar, Royal Society of Medicines , London, UK (Scientific Advisory Board)
Dr Peter Cruse is a former South African national medical Rhodes Scholar to Oxford University, Chief Specialist Pathologist at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, UCT Professor of Anatomical Pathology and MBA gold medallist. He is now an experienced commercial manager of multi-site hospitals, clinics and medical laboratories. He is a true “company doctor” capable of inspiring and leading rapid financial turnarounds of underperforming healthcare assets. His speciality is rapid performance enhancement. Focused on producing strongly positive EBITDA in excess of 20% by marketing-driven top-line revenue growth, Peter combines “hands on” charismatic leadership with surgically precise cost-cutting, lean methodology, productivity and efficiency gains. He rigorously uses data, dashboards, MIS, ICT and technology rather than simply employing more people to improve company performance.
As a UK-trained Specialist Histopathologist with an MBA and over thirty years of practical clinical and business management experience, the career of Dr Cruse has successfully combined clinical patient service with senior hospital, departmental and transformational business team leadership positions. He has led or worked in complex multi-site healthcare institutions in both the public and private sectors in five countries. He has extensive, full-time private equity experience of both investment fund raising and deal making. This has included simultaneous start-ups of multiple polyclinics, green-field new hospital builds as well as ongoing management of large multi-site healthcare organisations.